


I Think I've Lost Something

by Control_Room, Random_ag



Series: Tortured Tales [13]
Category: The Man With Eyes - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Broken people, Homophobia, Hurt No Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Psych Ward, begging for death, broken trust, mention of mind altering drugs, vegetative state
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27678884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Charlie does not visit him often. He never knows what to say.Malcolm just wants his friend back. He just doesn't want to lose him.
Relationships: Joey Drew/Malcom McNamara
Series: Tortured Tales [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023520





	1. I've Broken Something

**Author's Note:**

> takes place in an au where Charlie calls on Joey without consulting Malcom.

Charlie never would have done it if he had known. Ever. He did not know, and he did it.

Seeing his uncle dead eyed and hollow cheeked in pristine white sheets on a clean white bed with bleached white furniture in a dead white room. 

It was horrible. It made his chest clench harshly. Charlie would have rathered it all to be black, and was quite sure that Joey would have felt the same. If he felt at all anymore.

“Why are you here?” he asked without a smile, not even the big goofy one he wore when he had nothing else. It was not accusatory nor judgemental, nor was it curious. It was more a statement rather than a question. “Did you forget something?”

“No… ?”

“Ah, but you did…” Joey’s brow furrowed. “Or maybe I did….”

Joey then slumped back on the bed with that vacant look, nothing but the skeletal remains of a man whose worst fears were realized. Charlie could almost see another skeleton peering from his bones, and almost yet another hovering above, almost as if to say this was not what _he_ asked for. 

Charlie swallowed painfully. 

“It was probably me,” Joey whispered. “Who forgot. They have me on… they have me on so many medications. They say it will help me. I think. I can’t exactly be certain. It makes me so sleepy… and then when I’m awake, it’s like I’m still asleep… they steal my energy and replace it with pills, if I don’t take them they put it in my meals, and they make me eat food that tastes like raw ingots of iron, still clumped with dirt. It makes me forget… it makes me forget.”

“Uncle Joey--” Charlie began, but lost the words, trying again. “Uncle Joey--”

A hand nudged his own. Joey could not lift up his own hand, and it slid across the blanket like a sleep deprived pangolin.

“I’m not mad at you.”

Charlie froze. 

“I… don’t think I was ever… ever, mad at you. You are… a good kid… you wanted to...”

“I, I--”

“You wanted to help, I know,” Joey leaned back again, hand slipping away, but Charlie snatched it back.. “I know. Do you wanna know a secret?”

“Uncle Joey, I--”

“Tell your father I’ve always loved him.” 

“What?” Charlie’s eyes widened. “Wait, why should I-?” 

“Because he wastes his energy on me.” Joey’s voice was empty. “Here… here you see how important energy is… how good it is to have even a drop…”

He was dead. He spoke like a dead man.

Charlie clung to his hand as if it was a safety buoy, frightened out of his mind.

“He could--” his brain was running, he did not want him to stay there, he had to- “He could, in court--”

His hand was gripped back; Joey pulled himself upright and leaned closer to him.

“Charlie, sweetheart.” he smiled, kindly, abandoned.

“Nobody goes to court to get a gay man out of a psych ward.”


	2. I've Lost Something

A wide smile. No thoughts behind grey eyes

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Malcolm ignored his words. His fists were tight enough that it felt like his fingers were about to break.

“I'm getting you out.”

Joey smiled.

“No.” he simply said. His voice was a breath. “I’m not able to go.”

Malcolm marched into the room, reaching furiously for his hand. Joseph pulled it away from him, slowly, weakly; the lawyer chased it and held it as tight as he could. The pale palm gave no sign of life.

“I'm getting you out.” Malcolm repeated.

Joey stared into his eyes. His smile had dropped, and his gaze was devoid of any and all emotion.

“I'm getting you home. I'm getting you to a better place. You'll be alright. I promise you'll be alright.”

“I love you.” Joey croaked. It did not sound right. But it was the truth. One Charlie had not been able to tell, he imagined. One he hoped would drive him out of the room, out of the ward, to leave him to die.

Malcolm sunk his nails into his hand (instead of letting it go) and held it up to his chest (instead of pushing it away) and looked at him as if about to cry (instead of with disgust).

“I know.” he replied. There was a lack of romance in those words. There was a lack of hate. “I know.”

Joey shook his head. At first slowly, then faster, faster, feeling a strain somewhere in himself, a chord that was digging into his flesh, detesting every inch of his being.

“You don't.” he hissed, “You don't know. You don't know it right, you don't get it. You don't get it, you don't, you don't--”

He felt arms wrap around him and he shook hard, body convulsing, screaming to be free, rebelling against the love he should not have gotten, the love he was nog supposed to receive, let alone by the man he adored and loved and desired more than anything. This was wrong. This was wrong. This was wrong. It was all so fucking wrong.

“You don't-- you don’t-- you don't-- God, what is wrong with you-- what is, what is, God, God, God, why are you like this? Why are you--”

Malcolm forced his brother-in-law to bury his face in his neck. He felt his teeth graze against it as if to try and rip his throat out, but instead it was his heart (“Fucking kill me,” he was barking into his skin, “Spit in my eye and beat me to death.”). He murmured promises of a better life for him outside these horrid walls, caressing his hair as he convulsed in his arms as if caught by a seizure (“What the hell is wrong with you,” he was almost sobbing, dragging his hands across his chest and arms weakly trying to scratch him, “What the hell is wrong with you, why can't you just let me die if you won't kill me.”). He held him tight until his tremors quelled.

Joey cried with his mouth open. He gasped loudly without a single word.

“I’m not who I was,” he seemed to say with a wide eye gape. “I’m not who you remember me to be.”

“You'll be alright “ Malcolm hushed him. He just wanted Joey back. He just wanted his friend back. “You'll be alright.”

Joey cried and wished, above all, to die.

***

Malcolm spent weeks, months, waiting. Waiting patiently. Waiting hopefully. Taking care, feeding, monitoring, helping, holding, murmuring praises and promises. Lovingly tending to a wall.

Then one day he just sat.

Defeated

Empty.

They both were.

All three of them.

It was quiet.

Perfectly, harrowingly quiet.

“So… he’s gone?”

“I….” a swallow. “He’s gone.”

“Is it my fault?” Charlie almost asked. Instead, he swallowed, the same way his father would. Instead, he only said a little; “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Was that of sympathy, and, or, empathy?

Or was that answering the question in his head?

He had not dared looking at Joey since he had been brought back home with them, but it was not his home anymore. He had only caught glimpses of sunstarved skin and boney limbs, and thought to himself: that is my fault. I caused that.

He had not heard him speak since then. He did not ask for anything. He did not try to do anything. He did not want to drink, did not want to eat. He did not interact with the world if only to shake Malcolm off of himself when he tried to hug him.

He just. Was. And nothing more.

It would have been frightening if it was not so melancholic.

He could not think of the man stuck in that room without remembering the person who had brought him up and supported him his entire life. He could not hear his father speak to a hallowed husk without imagining a wide tooth-gapped grin and eyes full of shy adoration. He could not spy pale malnourished arms still on top of the bedsheets without seeing them excitedly draw comics and stories just for him.

Malcolm felt hollowed out. He looked as if his soul had been scooped out of him with a spoon. He gazed into the pavement, waiting for it to swallow him; if he did hear Charlie wheeling away slowly, he did not show any interest in it.

His hair was not greasy; he had been cleaned. The bowl of soup was empty; he had been fed. His eyes were circled black; he had not slept. He breathed; he was alive. From where he had been sat up he stared straight into the void, falling slowly in its viscous texture, never to come back.

“Uncle Joey?”

No response. Charlie held his hand, tears bubbling in his eyes.

“Uncle Joey. It's me.”

He did not move.

“I'm sorry.”

Joey looked ahead without seeing him.

“I'm so, so sorry.”

He was dead

Completely, irreversibly dead.

In the other room, Malcolm started sobbing.


End file.
